If you needed more proof of the weight behind social media, this is it.

Rage Against the Machine  have just had their first UK Number 1. They got it thanks to an extraordinary  Facebook campaign, beating X-Factor winner Joe McElderry.

The successful single, Killing in the Name, was released over 15 years ago. RATM spent nothing on marketing and yet they made it to Christmas No.1. Whatever your opinions of Rage Against the Machine, Simon Cowell, Facebook or Joe Mcelderry, this has been a great show of social media might.

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If you’re anything like me you’re constantly leaving your iPhone on a table or in the wrong pocket, always finding it in the end, but rarely there when you want it for that special photo or phone call.

I’ve never been a neck strap kind of guy, but with a goal in mind to have my iPhone with me at all times (naked or clothed), I decided to find a way to wear it around my neck.

I jumped on the web, as you do, and Googled it. Immediately noticeable were the lack of options out there. With the iPhone having no built in hook for a neck strap, my first choice was to buy a battery case like the Mophie, but unless you’re willing to hack a hole into it yourself, it isn’t a viable option. The only other immediate choice was to look for a case or pouch and disappointingly even that proved a struggle.

Nevertheless, I did manage to find a few decent options and these are the best of them:

Vaja Top SP Holster

While expensive, Vaja clearly knows the iPhone. With perfectly snug fitted cases and impressive build quality, you’re not likely to go wrong.

The only case with a neck strap option is the Top SP Holster but you’ll need to be able to deal with flipping the cover on and off whenever you want to use the phone.

Everything from Vaja is customizable so once you pick the model you like you can go ahead and personalize it. The downside of this process means that orders can takes a few weeks to fill, but you do get a product that is unique at a sub-$100 price tag.

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All of you iPhone lovers will adore this, incredibly professional customizable iPhone cases from Uncommon.

The process called 3D TATT™(Thermo-Active Transdermal Technology), is a sublimation technique that embeds an image, any image, deep in the plastic case which means that it won’t smear or scratch off.

“We were tired playing by everyone else’s rules. It sucked. We created Uncommon so that we could do whatever we wanted. Now we are giving you the power to do whatever you want. That is Uncommon,” says Scott Wilson, Uncommon Brand Director and Co-Founder.

If you don’t have an image to hand that you’d like to use, their website stocks over 70 artists with amazing portfolios, so even if you aren’t interested

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Given that the wonderful pagan holiday of Christmas is less than a week away, I am glad to bring you a follow up to our killer “Virtual Thanksgiving” post, and continue the tradition around here of celebrating holidays in our respective digital realms.

Ladies and Bruces, I present you with TheNextWeb’s Virtual Christmas Guide.

Forthwith to commence we must secure the central element of this ancient ritual: a tree. Thank your lucky Zodiac that indeed someone took the time to code up an app for us. Go decorate your tree here, and save a screenshot to your desktop. Make it your background image.

Isn’t that festive?

But Christmas after all is hardly all presents and goodwill, so go and read the Spark Notes of A Christmas Carol, skipping the last third. Past the 66% mark it goes all fluffy and feel good. Here, I did all the work for you, read it here.

Now that you are depressed with a tree, you need a pick me up. Time to make a warm holiday drink! Follow this recipe for eggnog with the spirit of your choice! The best way is with Brandy, but you can screw it up if you want. Go, get mixing! [The author would like to point out that indeed, we had a vote from our good friend@heyamaretto that Amaretto is the best Eggnog additive. This remains to be field tested.]

Now you have a sad tale, a drink in your stomach, and a tree. All you need is a bickering family, and a gift that you will return the next day. We can do both. First to the family.

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All the hottest location-sharing services use some sort of gaming element to get users hooked, but will we ever be 100% comfortable with people knowing where we are?

As the number of services that let us share our locations increases, it’s apparent that most of the more popular one use a gimmick that encourages us to let everyone know where we currently are.

Just look at Foursquare’s leaderboard and mayor deals, Gowalla’s collectable items and Waze’s ‘Road Goodies’. Most of the big names in geolocation are using games to get us used to sharing.

It’s understandable that these gimmicks are required – very few people are comfortable with publicly sharing where they currently are. Give someone the chance to become ‘Mayor’ of their local corner shop and they’re more likely to open up to the idea to broadcasting their location.

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You might have read many weird stories, but nothing could be this shocking and bizarre.

A poor Chinese couple swapped their one month old infant for a mobile phone.

According to the article, the young couple sold their infant for 2,500Yuan( $366) as they didn’t have money to raise the child, but the father was very happy with the price he got and decided to spend it on a mobile phone.

This incident came to police attention when a child trafficker was caught selling that infant for 10,000Yuan ( $1464).

Li, the 21 year-old father, a migrant worker, and his girlfriend Xin(19) are detained.

“When I got 2,500 yuan for the baby, I thought I might as well buy the phone I always wanted,” Li said.

Image Credit : Ben Heine

It’s out. The world’s most popular blogging engine has released it’s latest update and there’s a little something for everyone.

Along with a mass of bug and security fixes, Wordpress highlights the following as the major geek candy:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.

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Rackspace is back up, thank the heavens. Read the post to watch the comedy.

Final update, good commenter Alex (not me) has linked us to a very excellent graph that shows the downtime in graph form. Enjoy:

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